

The first time I ever used a "linear" editing machine, it was a Steenbeck, an outsize and intimidating table with a comparatively generous screen as well as a byzantine slalom of rollers for the film to work its way through. (He and Spielberg were among Hollywood's last holdouts, converting to full-digital editing in 2010.)įamed auteur Ernst Lubitsch is seen at his trusty Moviola. The first editing machine to be mass produced, the upright Moviola, was introduced in 1924, and despite later advancements that led to tables like the KEM and Steenbeck - the ability to edit multiple tracks of sound, incorporate time codes, and shuttle through the footage at high speed with quiet, fast motors - some editors preferred the old style, including Michael Kahn, who with Spielberg, cut long into the digital age the way he had for decades Munich, for which he won an Oscar in 2005, was cut on one of the old machines. In fact, the editing machine is a projector, with the only key difference being that it is ultimately projecting for an audience of one, the artist in charge of deciding on the physical alterations in the footage, alterations that would eventually get their closeup in the film's final form as a pristine print.īefore these machines, editors worked on hand-made systems, or by hand, frame by frame. First, on set, raw stock was exposed, then developed, then (budget permitting), developed into a comparatively inexpensive "work print" meant for the abuse of post-production (ironically, work prints are also often a source of piracy) this print would then be threaded and rethreaded through the Rube Goldberg-esque "plates" that held the film and sound on a classic editing machine. In the days before Avid, Premiere, and Final Cut, a film was made, from beginning to end, on film. And the machines which edited every film until the late 1970s were, in fact, projectors, except they were also heavy industrial equipment that could turn film into chewed up celluloid at speeds far exceeding 24 frames per second.
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It's almost like a movie projector, turned inside out. The first impression you get of a flatbed editing machine is of the intricacy of the thing.
